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At IU, what research computing services are available?

The Research Technologies
division of UITS provides the robust, reliable
supercomputing and storage systems, advanced media and interactive
visualization technologies, widely used scientific, analytical, and
bioinformatics applications, and proven professional training,
consultation, and support services that embody the core of Indiana
University's advanced scholarly and artistic cyberinfrastructure,
thereby enabling enhanced productivity and discovery in research
computing, and amplifying the talents of local and national
researchers.

Visualization and analysis systems and services

The Visualization and
Analytics area of Research Technologies provides systems,
software, and services that help IU researchers extract knowledge from
their data through a variety of visualization techniques, quantitative
analysis methods, and community-oriented workflows. Visualization and
Analytics also provides advanced media and interactive visualization
technologies that enable IU students, educators, and artists express
their creative visions. For more, see:

IU students, faculty, and staff have access to a wide variety of
scientific, statistical, mathematical, bioinformatics, advanced
multimedia, and interactive visualization applications to support
their research. Most applications are available on either the research
supercomputers or the Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL)
systems. Additionally, some scientific, mathematical, and statistical
applications are available on the computers in the Student Technology
Centers (STCs), or via IUware and IUanyWare. For
more, see:

If you have questions about using statistical and mathematical
software at Indiana University, email UITS
Research Analytics. Research Analytics is located on the IU
Bloomington campus at Woodburn Hall 200, and is open for consultation
by appointment Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. For more, see Research
Analytics, or call 812-855-4724 (IUB) or 317-278-4740 (IUPUI).

Data collections and open source software

Additionally, Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) Research Centers, along with PTI
Service and Cyberinfrastructure Centers, provide numerous digital data
collections and online services, and distribute open source
applications, all of which enable scientific research at IU and
throughout the US; for more, see:

Online tools

Research Technologies provides several online tools designed to
help IU researchers effectively collaborate with each other while
effectively using the IU cyberinfrastructure to achieve their
scientific goals:

Indiana CTSI HUB: The Indiana CTSI HUB is an online
portal providing information and tools to biomedical researchers at
IU, Purdue University, and the University of Notre Dame, and to local
and national community health organizations. For more, see:

MyOSG: The MyOSG portal is a
centralized location for finding information, tools, and services
related to the Open Science Grid (OSG), a distributed
computing infrastructure that interoperates with multiple other grid
infrastructures, allowing scientists to seamlessly harness
grid-computing resources worldwide for large-scale scientific
research. The OSG
Operations Center at IU provides a single point of operational
support for OSG users, resource providers, and collaborators. For
more, see the OSG web
site and the OSG
wiki.

Condominium and cloud computing

Condominium computing

Research Technologies condominium computing services are designed
to allow IU departments to offload the work of managing, securing, and
backing up their departmental research IT systems and system
components.

If you or your IU sub-unit have money available to use for a computing
cluster, you always have the option of buying and operating your own
cluster, as well as managing it, backing it up, and securing it
against hackers. Alternatively, you can purchase nodes that are compatible with IU's Karst cluster, have them installed in the
very secure IUB Data Center, have them available when you want to use
them, and have them managed, backed up, and secured by UITS Research Technologies staff. With
this option, you get access to your nodes within seconds of requesting
their use. Additionally, when they are not in use, they become
available to others in the IU community, thereby expanding the
computing capability available to the IU community while conserving
natural resources and energy. Since any piece of computing equipment
has a relatively short useful life (about four years), and it takes
considerable energy and a variety of metals to make a computer node,
the least environmental impact is achieved by using computing
equipment to its absolute maximum capability. Because of the benefits
to the IU community, UITS generally hosts condominium computing nodes
without charging maintenance or operations fees.

If you are interested in hosting computational nodes in the
Karst cluster using the condominium computing service
model, contact Research
Technologies.

Cloud computing

Through Indiana University's partnership with Penguin Computing, members
of the US higher education community (including
IU faculty, staff, and departments) can purchase on-demand
computational and storage services through the Penguin-On-Demand
(POD) "Cluster as a Service" offering. The POD service provides
the convenience and flexibility of other cloud computing providers,
with two important differences:

The POD service employs a real high-performance supercomputer
cluster, not virtual machines.

Because the POD system (Rockhopper) is physically located inside
the IU Data Center, researchers can be assured their data are securely
stored and maintained.

Support and consultation services

Note: Consulting services and computing cycles are
offered to students, faculty, and staff as baseline services through
university funding without any direct charge. However, some services
(such as requests to maintain personal/departmental workstations and
software for such workstations) may be on a charge-back basis. See Research Technologies
(RT) Chargeback Services Policy for details. Consulting services
for an extended period of time (over 20 hours) require a signed
agreement between the researcher and UITS. For more, see "Guidelines
for and terms of Research Technologies extended consulting services"
in RT
Policy on Prioritization of Work.

Software consulting

IU researchers can receive short- and long-term support and
consulting to help them effectively use scientific software and other
innovative information technologies that advance scholarship in basic
and biomedical life sciences, and genome analysis. For more, see: